Great Guns Unawares
by Chick-Curren
Summary: Marriage.  Birth.  Death.  In the end, all you have is family, and sometimes the people who become family surprise you.  S3 speculation/S2 spoilers.


_A/N: So this is a collaboration between Chickwriter and ARCurren. As a full-on disclaimer (besides the "we don't own them, we're only borrowing them from Julian Fellowes, arghhh, we're fic pirates"), this was the result of a long and vaguely drunken discussion between a Matthew/Mary 'shipper and a Sybil/Tom 'shipper over which character's fate would have the most dramatic effect on other characters. This is what we came up with..._

* * *

><p>Ireland, 1922<p>

_That morning_

"Your children are impossible!" Tom heard Sybil call over her shoulder. He came out from the kitchen, newspaper in hand, to find his wife seated in front of the two wooden high chairs, a bowl of porridge on her lap, spoon poised mid-air, feebly directed at two grinning, squealing blue-eyed conspirators covered in yellow mush. Heads, hands, chairs, bibs, the floor, even a bit on the wall behind them.

"It's like they're satisfied with food being everywhere except in their mouths," she sighed, not without a smile. They were pretty hard to resist. "Mummy is going to be late to work if you don't eat!"

"Go, go," he urged, coming over to trade places with her. "I'll stay until my mother gets here."

She looked up at him, thankful for the reprieve. "Really?"

"Of course," he replied, taking the bowl from her.

"Thank you." Sybil turned, hands on hips, and looked at her mush-covered babies, sweetly smiling up at her. "Oh, I'd like to think of you as little angels," she said, kneeling down and planting a kiss on each one's fat cheek, "but you're really more like little devils." She turned around to her husband and cocked an eyebrow. "Frankly, I blame their parents."

"Touche," he chuckled. He pointed with mock sternness at his mischievous children, causing them to cry out with delight. That was a bad sign. "I'll deal with you two and this breakfast business in a minute." He dropped the newspaper on the table and followed his wife as she went to put on her coat. "Busy day today?"

"I'm assisting a surgery at eleven, but I should be back around four." She sifted through her bag for something. "Will you be late today?"

"No, I have my last interview for the piece at noon. After that, all that's left is to put words to paper."

"Good," she smiled. "I can't wait to read your draft."

"What do you want to do about dinner?"

She wrinkled her nose. "I haven't thought that far ahead. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," he said good-naturedly. "I have no better answer. We'll figure it out."

"See you later." She kissed him, waved to the children. "Bye-bye, Mummy loves you!" Four mushy hands immediately reached forward and they both knew tears were not far behind. She threw them a look. "Oh hush, both of you," she chided lightly. "We do this every day- you know Mummy will be home soon."

She blew them a kiss and left.

* * *

><p><em>That afternoon<em>

The church bells chimed four o'clock. He sat in a comfortable chair, notebook illuminated by the sun through the window, trying to make the words come together. Soon after, he heard the lock turn and jumped up to meet her. She startled to find him literally on the other side of the door, a finger to his lips. He nodded for her to step back into the hall and said in a low voice, "Your children are asleep."

"Both of them?" He affirmed with a nod. "No!"

"Remarkable, eh?"

"Remarkable? Miraculous is more like it!"

"They conked out about twenty minutes ago."

"They should sleep for at least another hour," she mused. "Two well-rested babies- we might have a fighting chance at a bath tonight." She reached out and smoothed a wrinkle on his shirt with her palm.

"Are you hungry?"

"Starved. There were some complications during the surgery, so it went well past lunch. By the time we got out, I barely had time to finish my rounds before my shift was over."

"Do you think Mrs. O'Malley would mind the children so we can run out and have a bite to eat?"

"I'm sure she would. I'll knock on her door."

Sybil came back into the apartment as he was putting on his jacket and nodded with a smile, confirmation that Mrs. O'Malley, the widow who lived in the first floor apartment, was indeed on her way upstairs. They waited silently and he saw Sybil sneaking a few longing glances towards the babies' bedroom. He caught her eye and shook his head slowly. _Don't do it_, he warned silently. She responded with a guilty grin, leaned into his ear and whispered, "I just want to peek in. I won't make a sound, promise."

She did and as she did, Mrs. O'Malley arrived with her knitting. He whispered to her that they wouldn't be more than an hour. Sybil came back, smiled and squeezed Mrs. O'Malley's arm in gratitude, and they left.

As they descended the stairs, he asked, "Are the children all right? They didn't make off down the fire escape and this quietude is actually an empty room, is it?"

She laughed in the way that he loved and answered, "No, both are present and accounted for." A dreamy expression came over her face, the one that was quickened only by them. "You know," she said, "be they devils or angels, your babies are gorgeous."

"Maybe we should make another one," he murmured as he pulled her into a kiss.

"Maybe we should," she breathed as she pulled him closer to her. "_After_ dinner," she teased. "But they are gorgeous."

"I know," he replied, holding the door open. "I blame their mother."

They stepped outside into beautiful weather, the mild still air and the warmth of a brilliant late afternoon sun, for once, breaking through the rain clouds. They walked and traded the news of the day.

"Oh! I have to tell you," she started, taking hold of his arm, "about my encounter at the tea shop today."

She had stopped off for a cup of tea, as she usually did before work, at her usual place. "Another nurse from the hospital was on her way out and she called hello to me. The man behind the counter noticed my name and asked if I was related to the T.R. Branson who writes for the _Liberator_. I said, 'I am in fact- he's my husband.' He was so excited to hear that and he points to the wall in the back and it's your column! Framed and everything. And he told me his wife had another copy framed and posted in their hallway at home."

He had written many articles, but only one column; but it was widely believed to be the most important column of the War of Independence. Ironically, he had written it not in Ireland, but in Downton, England, in one of the many rooms of a British Lord, who was firmly set against Irish autonomy.

"And there it was," Sybil continued, her voice full of pride, "Welcome to Ireland: A Letter to Two New Citizens." It still moves me so to see it," she confessed, "as much as it did when you first showed it to me, all scrawl and smudged ink, fresh from the nursery."

He remembered, of course: the rocking chair- the moon perfectly framed by the window- the two twin cots- and of course, two twin newborns. How to explain to them what it means to be Irish? How Ireland's "unique" status meant they would not be as free as their British cousins. The Irish question had been so convoluted by politics and the harsh wounds, still not cauterized, of the past and recent past. They knew none of that, these perfect creatures with no past, only future.

He had written it to them, for them, but it appeared, the sole column featured in the all-important Sunday editorial spot. Exactly as written, not a word amended or edited out, including the last line: "To my children, born last Saturday, and S.B., who made us all possible."

"Anyway, I promised to bring you by the tea shop sometime soon," she said, "so the owner could meet you in person. He'd be so pleased."

"I can come tomorrow, if you like."

"Tomorrow it is then."

They turned the corner to the main thoroughfare of their neighborhood, the one with the bookshops and artists' studios and lively pubs and liberal politics, where young couples with young families met to toast the coming of the new world. They decided the fare at their local would be fine and quick, but as they came closer, they saw a crowd of people yelling up at two officers of the crown on horseback. The crowd looked indignant, the officers overwhelmed, and it was clear the situation was escalating.

Tom's first instinct was to step forward- it was the newshound in him- but then he remembered he was here as a husband, not as a journalist, and he stepped back and put a hand protectively on the arm of his wife.

Sybil either didn't notice his cue or chose to ignore it and craned her head with curiosity. "What in the world-?"

"We should go back. We don't know what this is."

Her eyes widened. "Don't you want to know what it is?"

"Sure, but this isn't my beat."

"The news is your beat. More than your beat- your duty." Sybil had a firm belief in professions of higher calling and civic responsibility.

"Not when I'm with my British wife," he replied evenly, with an emphasis on her nationality.

She was stubborn, but never stupid, and after a moment's consideration, conceded that it was best she stay away. "But you should find out what's happened."

"I'll walk you home first."

She shook her head. "I'll wait in the pub for you. I'll wait. Go!" she instructed and despite his instincts, he went.

* * *

><p>"And so my esteemed colleague seems to think..."<p>

The roars from the backbenchers never ceased to thrill Matthew, not even after a year as MP from Ripon. Regardless of whether they were there to egg him on, or to needle him, he relished the challenge of being heard in the chamber, and as his eye flicked to the gallery, he could see, even from this distance, the smile on his wife's face. She loved it almost more than he did, even though he knew she backed his opponent's view in this. He could feel her eyebrows rise at his argument, and the expression he imagined only spurred him on, knowing that at dinner they would continue the fight and she would be far better than the idiot who was standing for the opposition. She was also, as he watched the man's face go blotchy with anger, far more fun to fight with. He looked up again to smile at her, knowing just where to look in that sea of black and white, his eye drawn instantly to her coat of scarlet wool.

_The cries of the wounded never ceased to frighten the young English doctor, not even after two years of some of the worst things he had seen in his life. This was a mess of epic proportions, however, a street scuffle turned violent and then deadly. He was not political, but he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that both sides needed to leave it be and let live, because at the rate he was fixing bullet wounds and injuries from police truncheons, he was convinced there would be no one left in the city in ten years. He sent the man on the stretcher to the surgeons, and turned his attention to the next patient, cutting away the scarlet fabric, wet beyond belief. The wound made him shudder quietly and slow down. There was no rush. There was nothing he could do. He looked at the face and wished he hadn't, for it was one thing to watch a stranger die. It was quite another when your patient was the one who usually stood by your side as it happened._

Mary had little patience for being a passive audience, but watching Matthew debate in Parliament was strangely satisfying. He was like a cat playing with mice, cleverly drawing out one argument and then quickly pouncing at the first mistake, and she loved how her own mind could pick out exactly where he would go. _A good team, _she thought to herself as her hand briefly stroked the front of her coat, over the barely-visible curve that signaled the result of an entirely different kind of teamwork. She felt herself blush as she looked at him, now seated as the opposition took up the debate, and wondered what was in the small folded piece of paper passed to him only moments before.

It looked like a telegram.

_He wished he could do it on paper, send a telegram or something rather than actually face the family. He realized he'd never heard much about the family, and he wondered if it was the stiff upper lip he'd heard so much about, or that he just hadn't listened. Nevertheless, he wished he had heard, or listened, or asked the young nurse more, so he would know what to say to the young man in the now-ruined suit, sitting in the hall twisting a silk scarf around and around his hands._

Mary watched him read it, watched his shoulders slump, and his hand shake as he lifted it closer to his eyes, as if in disbelief, as if reading it to make sure of something, and her heart began to thump, the blood in her ears blocking the sounds of the gallery. Matthew's head lifted and turned to her, as if he knew she was watching him, and she knew, because of the look on his face, because his eyes were that terrible glacial blue that told her of sorrow and mourning, that whatever was on that piece of paper was nothing to do with the debate at hand and everything to do with her.

SYBIL KILLED STOP BRITISH OFFICER FIRED INTO CROWD STOP BREAK IT TO FAMILY STOP I CAN'T TELL HIM STOP

* * *

><p><em>That evening<em>

He walked home in the rain impervious to its chill. He reached their apartment and opened the door.

_"I blame their mother."_

He walked up the stairs.

"_Maybe we should."_

And entered their- his- flat.

"_Mummy will be home soon."_

No. No she would not.

Somehow his brother's wife had been summoned and with some words that he couldn't recall, he had convinced her leave, to leave as quickly as possible, leave so he wouldn't have to break down in public.

Every corner of the flat was haunted- her coat on the rack, her book on the table, the breakfast bowls in the sink. How could he ever clean up? How could he possibly start to put his beloved away?

He couldn't bear to look towards the bedroom door, which was mercifully shut. He sank down on the couch, lowered his head, and wept.

The church bells had chimed two o'clock before the throb behind his eyes finally subsided and devastation quickened fury.

He blamed the babies for sleeping.

He blamed the neighbor lady for being home.  
>He blamed the poor soul in surgery for having complications and causing her to miss lunch, without whom they would have just stayed home and made love until the children awoke.<p>

He blamed the sun because rain would have dissuaded them.

But mostly he blamed her because she couldn't just stay where she was, she could never just stay where she was, and he had only himself to blame for that.

He suddenly needed to see her children, to know they were safe and to see a physical, present reason why he should have lived.

He entered the dark room and stood between the starlit cribs of his son and daughter.

_They had sat, books in hand, by the fire last March, days before they were to leave for Mary and Matthew's wedding. She had looked up suddenly and asked, "What about Eden?"_

_"What about it?"_

_"For a girl."_

_"Eden?" he repeated. "That's an unusual name."_

_"So what? I have an unusual name," she retorted. "And she will be an exceptional girl, she should have an exceptional name."_

_"Eden Branson," he tested it aloud. "It has a ring to it. In fact, it's quite lovely."_

_She smiled with satisfaction. "I think so too."_

_"Alright. Eden for a girl. We're halfway done. What about for a boy? Schoolboys can be brutal, you know. Maybe something more normal perhaps, like John or James."_

_"Something like… Robert?"_

_"Sybil." He waited for her to crack up, surely that was meant as black comedy. "You can't be serious."_

_"I mean, you really can't be serious. Name my son after your father? You want to name your son after your father?"_

_"It is his first grandchild- and would be the first son in a generation, Matthew excluded. It would be an olive branch."_

_"Ha!" he had scoffed._

_"Come here," she ordered. He put his book down and came over beside her on the sofa. She took his face in her hands and kissed him. "You won, love," she reminded him, using his endearment for her. "You won. Just remember that, please."_

_In the end, they had decided on Francis, the patron saint of peace, a harbinger for peace for Ireland, but days before the birth he had acquiesced and told her, "It should be Robert Francis." And that's what went on the birth certificate when the babies were born in the same home as their mother._

Two eyes, the same as his own, pried themselves open and blinked at him. Eden's eyes scrunched up and with an anxious glance at his sleeping son, he went to soothe her before sound came. He picked her up, "Shush sweetheart, don't cry, I'm here."

She didn't cry, but laughed and laid her head contentedly on his shoulder, unaware that her mother had been stolen from her forever and her father had failed to stop it.

* * *

><p><em>She<em> had always known everything, so of course it fell it to her to tell her father.

* * *

><p>Her habit of twisting her fingers had made them quite numb, and she could barely pull on her gloves as the train slowed and stopped in Downton. There was no one to greet her. They had not telephoned ahead, so that no rumours might reach the family before Mary reached the village. There was the small problem of how to get to the Abbey, however, a problem Mary knew how to solve. With trembling hands, she used the stationmaster's telephone to call the house and ask for Edith.<p>

Edith didn't know why, but being summoned at the dinner hour by her sister to pick her up at the station was oddly pleasing. They'd become closer ever since the bizarre weekend of Sybil's wedding, when they learned each other's worst secrets and discovered they had exactly the same reaction to Sybil's nuptials. At some point that weekend, a strange detente began between them and they became like sisters for the first time in their lives and Edith liked it, liked being invited to stay in London with them, liked being introduced at parties with them, but most of all she liked the fact that Mary finally seemed to like her. She wondered why Mary had no luggage with her, why she was so distracted and silent as Edith's new Renault purred along the road to Downton, and most of all she wondered why when Mary stepped into the car, she had hugged Edith as she had never done before.

She killed the engine as they reached the stable yard, the car rolling to a stop. "I still can't make it slow down properly," Edith muttered. "Temperamental beast." She looked over at Mary, who was staring past her at the house. "Do you know, I think the last time I drove you, we were off to rescue Sybil."

Mary's eyes turned to her, wide and awful, brimming with tears, and for the first time, Edith watched her cold and careful sister break down in her arms.

"Lady Edith is back, m'lord. With Lady Mary. They're in the library."

"Well, for heaven's sake, tell them to come in here. Dinner's barely started. Lay another place for Lady Mary."

Carson winced. "M'lord, I think... It's best if you see them in there."

The idea that dinner could be interrupted was a revolutionary one. The fact that it came from Carson was so extraordinary that the other two at the table stopped eating. Cora was the first to speak.

"Carson, what is it?"

"I couldn't say, m'lady. Only that... they seem very upset."

And as Robert watched his mother make a beeline for the library, and he and Cora followed, he began to believe what others had told him for years, and that his mother used the stick only to make a point and not for ambulatory purposes.

* * *

><p>"Mary, what are you doing here?" Robert's voice broke through the sound of Edith's sobs, and Mary disentangled herself from her sister's arms and stood up. "Are you all right?"<p>

"I'm fine, Papa." She looked awful, her dark eyes made darker by purplish shadows, her hands shaking as she tried to clasp them in front of her.

"Has something happened to Matthew?"

"Not to Matthew, no," she whispered.

He heard Cora's high, thin cry, but he did not associate it with what stood before him, not even when Edith rushed to her mother to hold her. "Mary?"

"Please sit, Papa." Mary's jaw was trembling.

"No," he replied. "What's happened?"

"Sybil," she began, and she choked back a sob as her father did sit, his body crumpling into his desk chair. "She died last night."

Everything got quite small, and black, and thick as if coming at him through mud, and he could barely hear his own voice. "How?"

"She was shot outside a pub, near where they live. There was some sort of melee, and she was caught in it." Mary took a step toward him. "Matthew's trying to find out more, but it's all a terrible mess."

"I'll kill him." His voice was suddenly clear and cold, and Mary flinched. "This is his fault."

"A British bullet killed her, Papa."

**TBC**


End file.
